The present invention relates to systems and methods for predicting the path of a host vehicle for safety and non-safety automotive applications, such as adaptive cruise control (ACC).
Adaptive cruise control systems are gaining wide spread acceptance in vehicles today. Adaptive cruise control (ACC) systems utilize a conventional cruise control system, which maintains a desired vehicle speed. In addition, the adaptive cruise control system can modify the speed of the vehicle to accommodate for changes in traffic conditions. The ACC system accomplishes this through automatic acceleration, deceleration and/or braking. Thus, the vehicle having the ACC system (which will be referred to herein as the host vehicle) maintains a safe distance from the vehicle driving directly in front of the host vehicle (this vehicle will be referred to the target vehicle) as a function of road speed.
Typically prior art adaptive cruise control systems include an adaptive cruise control processor, a radar sensor, a brake intervention system, a display unit, an engine intervention system, a plurality of sensors (i.e., wheel speed, yaw rate, steering wheel angle, lateral acceleration), and a transmission intervention system. Typically, the radar sensor operates at a frequency of 76 to 77 gigahertz, which was specifically allocated for ACC systems. In operation, radar beam is emitted by the host vehicle and is reflected off of the target vehicle back toward the host vehicle. The propagation time, dopier shift, and amplitude of the emitted and reflected radar waves are compared. From this comparison, the range or distance, relative speed and relative position between the target and host vehicles are calculated.
One significant problem for ACC systems to overcome is to ensure reliable operation of the system in varying situations such as curves in the road and/or during lane changes. For proper system operation, it is essential that the target vehicle is correctly identified and the lane in which the target vehicle is located is also identified. Prior art systems obtain information from a yaw rate sensor, a steering wheel angle sensor, wheel speed sensors, and lateral speed sensors to determine the target vehicle""s lane location and curve status. Other systems under consideration for determining vehicle location are video imaging systems.
Methods found in literature use the yaw rate and the vehicle speed to calculate the curvature of the road. The shortcomings of this method are: first, the path or curvature of the road cannot be accurately predicted and second, any prediction is highly affected by the driver behavior. The first shortcoming is due to the fact that the calculated curvature from the yaw rate and the speed measurements represents the road curvature at the host vehicle position, and the sensors used have different kinds of measurements errors. The latter shortcoming is due to driver habit where he or she doesn""t follow the road curvature, e.g., during a lane change. Other prior art methods that use target information to estimate the curvature of the road assume that the host vehicle is always following the road. Therefore, these methods fail when a host vehicle maneuvers or changes lanes.
Therefore, what is needed is a new and improved method for overcoming these shortcomings. This new and improved method should accurately predict the location of the target vehicle without the need for extensive experimental data.
The method of the present invention utilizes what will be referred to as a projected host vehicle reference frame. The projected host reference frame results from rotating a host vehicle reference frame to align the host vehicle reference frame with a road reference frame. This is achieved by determining whether the host vehicle is changing lanes and accounting for a heading angle of the host vehicle with respect to the road. In addition, the present invention utilizes stopped and moving objects to obtain the maximum benefit of the existing objects in the radar field of view. Moving objects are perceived in two ways, first as moving object with history, and second as a stopped object at the current time. Also, the stopped objects such as a guardrail or a row of trees on a road side can perceived as a fictitious moving object that travels at the host vehicle speed.
In an aspect of the present invention, a method for estimating the curvature in a road is provided. This method uses an azimuth angle range and relative velocity between a host and a target vehicle radar measurement to determine whether the host vehicle is changing lanes or whether the target vehicle is changing lanes.
In another aspect of the present invention, the method calculates a heading angle of the host vehicle and calculates a corrected azimuth angle by adjusting the measured azimuth angle by the value of calculated heading angle
In a further aspect of the present invention, the method selects a curve that minimizes the mean square error between the curve and selected targets, and determines an equation that describes the curve, wherein the equation is used to predict the path ahead of the host vehicle.